


until it ends (there is no end)

by teatin



Category: DC Extended Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Flaspoint AU, Steve Trevor Lives, Time Travel, WW84 Divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:13:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19129009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teatin/pseuds/teatin
Summary: Diana stands before him, her armor sharp at the edges, her gaze cold and calculating. He tries to move but finds the glowing Lasso of Hestia binds him, burning cold into his skin.He tries not to think about the last time this happened, how similar and yet different the situation is this time, such a stark contrast that he feels like laughing from the absurdity of it all, like his entire world has turned on its head and left him stranded, desperately grasping for something that is no longer there.“Diana,” he gasps out.“Son of Prometheus,” she says, voice icy, betraying no emotion. "How?"It makes him flinch, but he meets her gaze resolutely, refusing to look away.“We knew each other,” he says, wary of her reaction. “In another world.”Or: Steve Trevor is dead. Except he's not. When he wakes up after death, he finds himself living the perfect ordinary life he's always craved but never had the chance to have. Until the memories of a warrior goddess start returning to him, and he is forced to examine the truth of his own existence, and along the way, come face to face with his greatest foe yet: his own beloved angel, now a twisted vengeful version of herself.





	until it ends (there is no end)

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, my labor of love, six months in the making! Mapping out the plot for this one has been a long and arduous process, but I'm very happy with the result! I should however note that this is not a direct adaptation of Flashpoint, but rather a retelling of the same general premise with an extra focus on Steve and Diana's relationship. Also doubles as a direct sequel/fix-it to the 2017 movie; as such this fic is not canon compliant with WW84.

_yet always, you forgive me._

_as if you understand what's going on, and you're making up for_

_all the lifetimes in which one of us doesn't exist,_

_and the ones where we just, barely, never meet._

_i hate those. i prefer the ones in which you kill me._

_but when all's said and done, i'd rather surrender to you in other ways._

\- **25 lives, tongari**

 

It begins with a flash.

And then, for what feels like an eternity, there is silence.

Slowly however, the slightest hint of a sound starts to trickle in, filling the surroundings with a strange energy. The faintest signs of life. Muttering voices, low and calm at first, growing louder and more urgent, speaking in languages he understands and tongues he doesn’t. Voices of men, women, and children, getting closer and receding into the distance, over and over, like soundwaves lapping against his eardrums. The sensation is, to his surprise, strangely comforting.

Suddenly, he feels his surroundings shift. There is a faint but distinct sizzling sound coming from behind him, seemingly headed in his direction. The hairs on his arms stand on end and he can feel the beginnings of goosebumps on his skin, as the sensation of being lightly prickled from all directions, inside and out, grows ever clearer, as if the air itself has been imbued with a strong current of electricity.

The sizzling sound finally buzzes past him with such force that it nearly knocks him off his feet. The soundwaves around him twist and distort, before being sucked in the direction of the electricity current, and, to his alarm, dragging him with them.

Into the endless abyss.

 

*

 

Sunlight streams through the curtains as a light breeze tickles his skin. Holding a hand over his face, slowly, as if for the first time in ages, he opens his eyes.

He seems to be in a nondescript apartment, with beige walls, a desk in a corner and a small dresser in another. Judging by the position and intensity of the sun, it must be past noon. There are muffled voices coming from above him, not loud enough to be disruptive, but not quiet enough to go unnoticed, either.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he tries to summon the last memories he can remember, and is surprised to find they come quite easily. His name is Steve Trevor, he is a pilot in the United States Army Air Service, stationed in England. He’s been trying to deliver intelligence to the British, with mixed success. He –

He stops. None of that explains where he is or why he’s here. Desperation grips his throat, an invisible yet deadly force. For a moment he entertains the smallest glimmer of hope that perhaps all of this was simply a bad dream, that when he closes his eyes and opens them again, he is back at his parents’ farm house in Oklahoma, and any minute now his sister Tracy is going to burst through the door and plop herself on the mattress as hard as she can, the way she always did to wake him up on his particularly stubborn days when they were children.

But just as quickly as the thought comes, Steve chases it away, mentally chastising himself. He knows better than to indulge in daydreams. The truth is, his parents died a few months after he turned eighteen, and Tracy long before that, taken by an illness when he was ten. He then sold the farm shortly before enlisting in the army, having decided the memories were too much of a painful reminder of better times.

He thinks of better times, and remembers Charlie singing for the first time in so many years, remembers Chief’s hand patting his shoulder, strong and reliable, Sammy’s wits keeping him from brooding too much, and… something else.

He remembers brown eyes, wide with wonder and innocence and yet sparkling with kindness and resilience. Remembers soft dark hair kissed by snowflakes, remembers a night of passion in a cramped inn in a Belgian village, drunk on the taste of victory. Remembers her.

 _Diana_. The name spills out of his lips as if in a prayer, he wonders how he could have ever forgotten her.

From there, the rest of his memories come back in a flood, unstoppable and all at once. He remembers the look of despair in Diana’s eyes, the way her voice echoes all around the airfield, distraught and devastated, as she calls after him. Remembers cocking a pistol, the pitch black sky stretching out in front of him.

He remembers everything. By all logic, he shouldn’t have survived. He didn’t expect to survive. And yet, here he is.

Groaning, he falls back onto the mattress, feeling the beginning of a headache pounding against his skull, when something startles him.

_“Hey Steve, I didn’t get a chance to say this last night as we were leaving because you were pretty hammered, but thanks for coming, man. You did me a solid there, I owe you one. I know you went out of your way for me, so I promise I won’t blow it with Maya. Get some Tylenol for that hangover I’m sure you have right now. I’ll see you on Monday, dude.”_

Steve stares at the phone quizzically, before something akin of déjà vu washes over him. That’s his best friend, Nick, who has been trying to court this one girl, Maya. Except she’s a shy one, and wouldn’t go out with him unless they made it a double date, which was where he came in. They spent a night at a party where Nick visibly made some progress in his relationship with Maya, while Steve was left to carry what was perhaps the driest conversation with a girl whose name he can’t remember, desperately distracting himself with glass after glass of vodka, which probably explains his current predicament.

All of the memories come back in a flash. There is only one problem: he is fairly sure they never happened. Or, if they did happen, they weren’t his.

As Steve moves around his apartment, feeling every surface and touching every object, his mind automatically fills in the blanks for him: these tomatoes were bought yesterday at the farmer’s market for pasta. His shaving cream ran out last night. On the desk are some sketches and blueprints he had been working on before Nick all but dragged him out of his apartment for a “fun night’s out”. Everywhere he looks, his brain helpfully supplies him with information.

Information about a life that isn’t his, because he’s fairly sure he doesn’t know what a laptop is, and yet he knows he bought his three years ago during a Christmas sale, and that he doesn’t know what the small, rectangular device in his hand is, and yet he knows it’s a phone he had been saving up for months to buy and he knows exactly how to use the Google Maps app on it.

Uneasiness tightens around him like a vice as other memories begin to – he can’t even say ‘resurface’ because he’s not sure if he’s ever experienced them to begin with – materialize in his head. The names of his friends. The football team he played for in college. His first girlfriend. The address of his favorite restaurant. He tries to stop them, but they keep coming, snaking their way inside his brain, curling themselves into every corner, refusing to leave.

Biting his lip, he tries to divert his attention by thinking about Diana. The way her face lights up as she tries ice cream for the first time, the sound of her laughter, laced with fascination and pure glee, as she catches a snowflake in her hand. The way she looked at the gala, hair swept up and wearing-

The memories become fuzzy at the edges as he struggles to recall the exact shade of blue of her dress, or the hardness of the sword hilt on her back as he holds her on the dance floor. At the same moment, his mind helpfully supplies him with yet another unnecessary bit of information: he has an appointment with his boss at 9am on Tuesday, and he’s supposed to bring the blueprints with him.

He’s seized with yet another wave of panic as he realizes that in the span of maybe twenty minutes since he’s awoken in this strange place, absolutely certain that he was Steve Trevor, a pilot fighting in the Great War with his ragtag team of misfits with divided opinions on the existence of a God of War, who seemingly died and found himself in a life that isn’t his own, now he’s not sure if _that_ part was the dream and _this_ is the reality he’s living in.

One thing is certain: he wants to know the truth.

With that one burning goal in mind, he hastily grabs what he assumes is his discarded coat from the night before hanging off the back of a chair, and heads out of the apartment. He doesn’t even know where to go or what to do, and the surroundings seem so alien. Yet with every step he takes, everything seems to clear up in his mind. In the apartment next to his, there’s an old lady living with her dog, who beams at him when he offers to carry her groceries for her and afterwards insists he stay for dinner, or at least take home some homemade pies as a thank you. In the apartment facing his, a young couple who’s just had a baby. The husband gives him an apologetic smile once or twice, which he waves off as no big deal. In mere seconds, he’s become intimately familiar with everything. It’s as if he’s always lived this life.

Somehow, this doesn’t feel as comforting as he thought it would.

Luckily (or perhaps unluckily), he doesn’t have enough time to dwell on it, because right as he turns a corner toward the stairs, he very nearly collides with a tiny frame going in the opposite direction.

“Woah there,” small, gentle hands grab onto his forearms to steady him. “Slow down there, buddy. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

He’s about to stammer an apology when he catches a glimpse of the woman’s smiling face, and freezes.

Those familiar eyes.

It can’t be.

By the time he’s managed to shake himself out of his trance, the woman is still standing there, studying him with a concerned, almost curious look. He feels his throat dry up. It’s impossible. She can’t be here. He knows this because he saw – he saw –

“Steve?” The woman speaks up, waving a hand in front of his face in an attempt to get his attention.

“Tracy?” he asks, and hates how much his voice is trembling.

“Yeah?” she responds, looking puzzled. “Steve, are you feeling alright? You’re pale as a sheet.”

“I…” he begins, but the words escape him. There is not a single word or emotion in existence that can describe the way he feels right now, staring at a phantom of his own sister. Tracy died when she was seventeen. The woman standing in front of him must be in her late thirties at the very least. It’s like staring at a vision of what could have been.

Except it’s not a vision, because this Tracy is very much real, and she’s now touching his forehead and cheeks, a worried crease between her eyebrows as she searches his face for any symptoms of illness. “Steve, talk to me. Are you sick?”

“You’re here,” is all he manages to breathe out. “You’re… really here.”

“I am,” she says, in her usual reassuring voice that she always used to soothe and calm him when he was little. Hearing it again after so long sends a pang through his chest. “And thank God I got here when I did, because it’s clear to me that you need to rest. You’re not running off anywhere today. Tracy’s orders.”

Involuntarily and to his own embarrassment, his mouth twists into a pout. “I’m not a kid anymore, Trace.”

“No, but if you act like a kid, you’ll get treated like one,” Tracy says, not unkindly. She nudges him lightly in the direction back to his apartment. “Come on now, Stevie. We haven’t seen each other in a while. How about you take one day off in your crazy busy life and catch up with your sister for a change.”

He’d always hated it when she called him Stevie. Now, he can’t imagine hearing a sound more beautiful. Before he can stop himself, he pulls his sister into a tight hug. Tracy stiffens for a moment, taken aback by the unexpected display of affection, before she relaxes and wraps her arms around him in turn.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Steve murmurs. “I’ve missed you so much, you have no idea.”

“Me too, kiddo,” Tracy says. “Me too.”

Afterwards, she drags him back to his apartment, and insists on cooking lunch. They spend the whole day talking, and watching kitchen remodeling reality shows (Tracy seems to have very strong opinions regarding marble countertops), and just enjoying each other’s company. Steve is astonished to find how quickly and easily they fall into a steady rhythm, as if they’ve been doing this for years.

As if Tracy never died before she ever got a chance to experience adulthood, long before either of them were old enough to know what it felt like to make time for each other in their busy adult lives.

By the time Tracy gives him one more hug at the door before heading home, Steve can’t even remember why he wanted to leave the apartment in such a hurry in the first place. He suspects it’s something important, but cannot put his finger on it.

He shrugs, and dismisses the thought.

 

*

 

If there’s one thing Barry knows for certain, is that something is horribly, horribly wrong.

At first, his mind doesn’t register anything out of the ordinary. He’s Barry Allen, forensic expert with a life as normal as they come. And yet, one day, as he’s running late to work, something flashes in his mind.

Images, fragments of a life that isn’t his, yet seems so familiar. He sees himself, speeding across the city in a blink of an eye, as if he possessed some kind of superhuman strength. He sees himself, fighting alongside friends whose faces he doesn’t recognize. He sees flashes of a different life, a different reality even.

He dismisses them as daydreams at first. After all, his mother has always said he had quite an imagination as a child, and Barry himself knows he can get really carried away with his fantasies sometimes, but something nags at the back of his mind, compelling him to listen.

 

*

 

Steve works. He’s got a cushy job in the city as an architect. He’s working on a huge development project for the city. He’s good at what he does. He can feel a promotion coming up in his near future. He has his sister, and friends who care about him. His life is, to put it simply, everything he’s ever wanted. For the most part, he’s stopped thinking about the trenches and the gunfire and the woman ( _Diana._ He just can’t get her out of his head). Perhaps they were nothing more than vivid dreams brought about by that hangover he had, he tries to convince himself.

After all, his life _makes sense_. And the longer he’s awake, the more _real_ everything becomes. There is no reason for him to believe otherwise, every puzzle seems to fit perfectly in place.

But at night, he dreams. The same images, the same memories, over and over. He sees an angel looking down upon him with the blinding light of the sun behind her, crowning her head like a halo. He hears the sound of water lapping against wood, moonlight guiding a boat toward an unknown destination. He sees Diana’s face, half illuminated by the fireplace, staring at him intently, her eyes hungry, inviting. He hears an anguished voice calling out his name, thousands of miles away, a hundred years ago.

It’s like there are two different versions of his life, fighting for dominance, jockeying for control, each trying to convince him the other is lying.

Slowly, he begins to feel bored, trapped. Working on his blueprints, he finds his mind wandering. He yearns for the wind against his skin, the vast blue sky over his head and the world looking small beneath his wings. He’s perturbed to discover that the more he thinks about them, the more they feel like distant memories rather than daydreams.

When he works, his brain feels like it’s on auto-pilot, and before he knows it, he’s managed to finish another assignment perfectly without even knowing what he’s done. When he talks to his friends and co-workers, the words that come tumbling out of his mouth don’t feel like his own. Sometimes, he feels like he’s observing his own life from a distance, like the things that happen to him are happening to someone else and he’s simply a bystander, observing.

It nearly drives him mad.

So he seeks out the one person who anchors him, who’s always anchored him. His sister. Tracy.

( _There is another person_ , the tiniest spark gnaws at the back of his mind, an uneasy feeling that one might get when they know they’re forgetting something but can’t quite put their finger on what exactly what it is. As if instinctively, he yearns for the comfort of an unknown figure, a shadowy phantom.

The feeling is gone as quickly as it came, and after a moment of hesitation, Steve shrugs it off and continues on his way, with only a hint of a doubt lingering in his heart.)

 

*

 

“You’re exhausted, Steve,” Tracy remarks upon taking in his appearance. “Hate to say ‘I told you so’, but I told you so. You work too hard.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but she refuses to wait for whatever sorry excuse he’s managed to cook up.

“But, of course, you being you, you never listen to me. It’s not like I’m always proven right or anything.”

Despite the no doubt lengthy lecture she’s prepared to give him, there is no malice in her voice. He chuckles. Even after all these years, Tracy’s sharp tongue hasn’t gotten any softer. Strangely, in these moments, the familiarity of it comforts him.

It must’ve been the desire for the comfort of the familiar that drove him to say, “Remember… remember when we were kids fooling around on the farm?”

Tracy laughs softly, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “We did a lot of fooling around as kids. I’ve been doing it since before you were born. Some of it less innocent than others. You’ve gotta be more specific.”

“I remember Dad’s old biplane,” He sighs softly, soaking in the memories. “I was afraid of climbing in at first, but you convinced me to. I loved sitting in the cockpit, pretending to fly. You told me one day I’d fly for real. I think it’s that dream that finally got me out of Oklahoma, got me to follow my heart and not just be another Midwest farm boy.”

Tracy is silent, and the way she looks at him (with confusion? Anger? Disappointment?) throws Steve off.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Tracy bites her lip. “Steve, you promised you wouldn’t talk about it anymore.”

“Wouldn’t talk about what? I’m only trying to reminisce. Isn’t that what – ”

“Dad never owned a biplane!” Tracy yells, slamming her hands on the tabletop. A few curious and disgruntled café patrons glance their way, their gazes disapproving. Steve recoils, taken aback by his sister’s sudden outburst. Tracy may be tough, but she’s never lost her temper. Never –

“Trace, I’m sorry,” he says because quite frankly, he’s too shocked and embarrassed to come up with anything else. Right now his only instinct is to try and de-escalate. “I – I must’ve misremembered.” He didn’t. He definitely didn’t. The more he thinks about it, the surer he is that he did not. There was no way he could forget something as big, as significant as this.

Something is amiss.

“You were always talking about flying, about becoming a pilot,” Tracy continues, her voice trembling. “You made up all these stories about Dad owning a plane and us pretending to fly in it. How – how could you be so selfish? Don’t you care about Mom, at all?”

Now he’s thoroughly confused.

“Tracy, you’ve always supported my dream to fly. And sure, I enlisted in the army and fought in a World War, and that wasn’t what I had in mind when I said I wanted to be a pilot, but I thought you’d be – ” _Wait._

He isn’t a pilot. He’s an architect. He’s certainly not old enough to fight in any World War. Or is he?

Come to think of it, how did he even come up with that story with the biplane? They never owned – no, they did, they most certainly did.

What is going on?

“ – Always tormenting Mom with your wild fantasies. You _knew_ she didn’t want to hear any of it, not after Dad died in Afghanistan. She got sick, for God’s sake! Really sick, Steve! I thought you’d finally outgrown it and found a proper job, I had so much hope that things would go back to normal. You and your stupid obsession with the Great War, your macho need to prove your own masculinity – ” Tracy continues, unabated, but Steve isn’t listening to any of it.

Something’s wrong.

No, _everything’s_ wrong.

He remembers it more vividly now, the smell of damp, muddy trenches, the sound of a shell exploding near him.

His arms around a woman’s waist. Him reaching up to brush a snowflake from her dark hair.

He doesn’t realize he’s hyperventilating until he hears Tracy’s concerned voice calling to him. At this point, the entire café is staring at them and the owner is about two steps away from kicking them out for making a ruckus, but he doesn’t care anymore.

He stares at his sister, and it’s like he’s seeing her for the first time: as someone who isn’t real.

_Your sister is dead. She has never been here. She never came back to you._

“Steve, I’m so sorry,” Tracy says, looking as disbelieved with her own outburst as he had been. “I didn’t mean to scream at you. It’s just, it was a difficult time, and I – I haven’t – ”

He doesn’t listen to the rest of it. Standing up so abruptly that his chair scratches against the wooden floor with a shriek, he takes off running without another word.

 

*

 

Steve is sitting in the common room, poring over a floor plan for a proposed renovation of a local shopping mall, sipping on his coffee, only barely registering the muffled noise coming from the TV, which is running some news story. He hasn’t spoken to Tracy in the week following the incident, and has been adamant on ignoring her calls, text messages, and has pretended not to be home the one time she came to his apartment wanting to talk.

Other than that, he hasn’t experienced any strange contradictions in memory. Life looks like it might go back to normal in a couple days, but this time, he refuses to let it take over him again like it did that day outside his apartment, when his mission to figure out the truth was halted by Tracy’s sudden appearance. He refuses to be lulled into complacency again, not until he figures out what is happening to him.

Because _something_ is happening, that’s for sure.

Whenever he looks up at the vast blue sky, he feels a pang in his chest, a longing for something he isn’t quite sure is real. Whenever Nick, blissful in his new love, teases him about finding someone for himself, he can’t help but think of a woman, her tiara glistening in the sunlight, her bracelets glowing ember, her hair flying in the wind as she crosses the battlefield.

 _It is not a dream_ , a voice in his head whispers. _You know it’s not. Stop running from the truth_.

He shakes his head, trying to concentrate on the task at hand. He’s failing.

_“–Just minutes ago, sources report that an army of warrior women, calling themselves the Amazons, have declared war on the United States of America. In this 2-minute video, a warrior which military experts have identified as the Amazons’ leader, a woman calling herself Queen Diana, the Wonder Woman, hailing from an island called Themyscira –”_

At the name, Steve’s head whips up so quickly he’s thankful he didn’t give himself whiplash. He stares at the news story, completely transfixed, ignoring the worried whispers and anxious glances of the few co-workers milling about the room.

_Diana._

Something else stirs in his mind, a faint memory of a lifetime ago, of a different world.

_“What is this place?” “Themyscira.”_

Too caught up in his own thoughts, Steve fails to realize that the news story has cut to a slightly blurry video of a woman, and his heart almost stops in his chest.

It’s her.

It’s Diana.

He stands up, his chair scratching noisily across the floor. Ignoring his colleague’s pointed looks, he grabs his jacket and runs out without another word.

 

*

 

He doesn’t stop running.

That's all he knows how to do these days, it seems. Running away when things get too hard or confusing.

Whatever this world is, it’s a lie, and he wants nothing to do with it.

He curses himself under his breath, feeling his eyes sting. Whoever or whatever created this, they spun a lie so convincing that for a while, he actually bought it. A thousand emotions run through him at the same time. Disappointment that he was able to be so easily deceived into doubting his own memories, into believing his true life was just a passing dream. Shame, that he was so desperate to have a normal, stable life that perhaps a part of him actively willed himself to believe it. Wistfulness, knowing that this is not real, that his only true fate is death and oblivion. Guilt, at wanting more than that and knowing he doesn’t quite deserve it.

He only stops when he feels his legs burning with fatigue. Half-leaning on a brick wall in a narrow alley to catch his breath, Steve realizes that he’s in an unfamiliar part of town. People all around him seem to be walking with a hint of urgency in their steps, no doubt concerned about the possibility of an impending invasion. Faintly, he hears the sound of a TV coming from one of the open windows, with the President making some kind of speech about mobilizing troops in response to Wonder Woman’s threat.

He closes his eyes, letting his head rest on the cold, hard surface of the wall. He’s not sure how long he’s stayed there, head pressed against the wall. Could be hours, could be an eternity.

He knows the truth now, but what’s next? He wants to, no, _needs to_ , find Diana, but where does he even begin? And why is she leading an invasion against men in the first place?

What kind of twisted timeline has he found himself in?

For a split second, he has a feeling he’s being watched, but before he can fully assess the potential threat, a familiar sensation causes a chill to run down his spine. A faint crackling, sizzling noise in the distance. He’s heard that bef-

Before he even has a chance to finish his train of thought, he’s startled by a hand clamping down on his shoulder. And before Steve has a chance to even think, in a move that surprises even himself, he’s twisting the intruder’s arms behind his back in a firm hold.

“Ow, ow ow ow,” the man squeaks out. “That hurts, that hurts, that hurts. Please, I just want to talk. I swear.”

Steve gets a quick once-over at the man. He’s wearing a red hoodie and baggy jeans, and smells faintly of… pizza? He looks him over briefly to make sure he isn’t armed, then releases the man, who rubs his shoulders with a wince.

It is only then that he manages to get a good look at the man. A young man, maybe in his early 20s, is standing in front of him, panting, frazzled, and visibly shocked.

“Oh my God,” he begins, breathless. “It’s you. It’s really you. I mean, I thought it was you, and nothing makes sense about this reality anyway, so it’s really not all that surprising, but to see you in the flesh. Wow. That’s just – ”

“Who the hell are you?” Steve interrupts him, his body instinctively moving into a defensive position as he eyes the stranger suspiciously.

“Right, you don’t know who I am,” the young man shakes his head, more at himself than at Steve. “My name’s Barry, I’m with the good guys. Okay, I know this is going to sound absolutely crazy, and I should know, crazy’s kinda my thing, but I need your help and I need you to listen to me.”

“Slow down,” Steve starts again. “How did you find me? What do you want from me?”

“Seriously?” Barry whines, clearly exasperated. “Sometimes I forget how slow people can be. I found you in that newspaper article, from that interview you gave on renovating that shopping mall. Came to your office, your friends told me you ran off to the Northern part of town, so I followed you here. Took a while to pinpoint your exact location, too. For a slow guy, you’re quite tricky to find. Or maybe it’s because I’ve never done this before. Tracking someone down, I mean. But totally not in a nefarious way or anything. Anyway, I told you, what I want is for you to listen to what I’m about to say, and I knows it’s probably going to sound crazy, but this is an emergency and, please, please, I need you to trust me.”

Steve lowers his defenses slightly, sensing in the man’s desperation that he might not be a threat after all. Barry visibly relaxes, as well, takes a deep breath, and starts again, slower this time.

“I know who you are,” he begins, trepidation evident in his voice, as if he’s afraid of how Steve might react. “I don’t mean you as in famous architect Steve Trevor. I mean you as in the soldier in Diana’s photo.”

“Diana?” Steve perks up. “You know Diana?”

“Oh my God, you remember too!” Barry exclaims, and he looks so relieved for a moment Steve is afraid the younger man is going to burst into tears. “So it’s not just me, something _is_ wrong with this whole –” he vaguely gestures around them. Steve nods grimly, understanding.

“You know Diana,” Steve repeats, then laughs, mirthlessly. “Why didn’t you start with that?”

 

*

 

The memories come back to him in flashes, in floods, in the moments he least expects them. Every night, Barry dreams of winged demons and boxes pulsating with energy, tossing and turning in his bed. He sees a woman with sad eyes, stroking an old photograph, smiling to herself when no one is looking. He sees a figure half hidden in the darkness, tormented by grief and regrets, as ominous laughter rings in the distance. He sees a man who has lost himself but is desperately trying to put the remaining pieces back together. He sees the land and the sea collide in a burst, and a man emerging from it, not quite belonging to one world or the other.

Splintered fragments of something so familiar and so close he feels like he can just reach out to grasp it.

Until one day, he does. And for the first time in his life, the world starts to make sense.

He first attempts to locate Bruce, but information he manages to dig up online tells him he died as a child, in a mugging gone awry in Gotham some thirty years ago. And as far as he can tell, Superman doesn’t exist, nor does Clark Kent. He attempts to find Victor, but doesn’t get much further than his name before he hits a dead end. Whoever Victor is in this universe, he does not want to be found. He tries Arthur as a last resort, but a search of his name brings up nothing, and he isn’t sure if there is Wi-Fi down in Atlantis, if it even exists in this universe.

Kicking his desk in frustration, he accidentally sends a stack of books and papers flying. Groaning, he bends down to pick them up, when something catches his eye.

He thinks about Diana, and the old photograph.

He thinks about the fact that no one has believed him when he tries to bring up his suspicions about the reality they’re living in.

For a moment, he contemplates it. But then he hears his mother’s voice ringing down the hall as she returns from running some errands, and temptation to stay just a bit longer wins out.

He closes his laptop and stuffs the newspaper back between his stack of books.

 

*

 

This is what Steve has gathered from this absolutely bonkers of a day.

Barry – who in another life is apparently some kind of speedster who works closely with Diana and some other so-called metahumans, a group of heroes called the Justice League – went back in time to prevent his mother’s murder, which screwed with time and space and created a whole new universe, the one they’re in now, where everything is different – one of those differences apparently involves Diana being a tyrant with an axe to grind with mankind – and now they need to find a way to fix it and get everything back to normal while they’re still alive to do so. What with an all-out global war about to break out and all.

If Barry were to tell him this story two weeks ago, Steve would have laughed and brushed him off as some kind of lunatic. But Steve has seen many things – he’s seen bullets bounce off Diana’s bracelets as if they were nothing more than harmless pebbles, has seen Diana completely demolish the upper part of a church with her bare fists, has seen her battle the God of War himself, has died and somehow miraculously wound up here.

So really, at this point there’s nothing that surprises him anymore. What he’s concerned about isn’t the legitimacy of Barry’s story, he believes every word of it.

No, that’s not the part that sticks with him. What he notices in Barry is a certain… reluctance. Like he knows they don’t belong here and they ought to do something about it, but this fake reality has offered Barry a temptation that must have taken him a while to fight and resist. His mother, Steve’s mind offers helpfully. If everything is set back to the way it was, his mother would be gone.

(But they have to, they have no choice. This isn’t their world.)

Still, as someone who’s been there, Steve feels pity and empathy for the kid.

“Listen, Barry, if we revert everything back to normal – ”

“I know,” Barry cuts him off. For a seemingly naïve and hyper guy, he’s awfully perceptive. “I know what happens.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve offers. “I know a thing or two about how it feels.”

Barry looks at him, an inquisitive look in his eyes. “You do?”

“My sister. She’s here. Or rather, she’s not. I’m not actually quite sure how to put it, but I do know it isn’t her.”

Barry nods in understanding, a pensive look on his face. “Neither of them is real.”

Steve knows he doesn’t really need to ask, but he does anyway. “You’re okay with this?”

Barry swallows, and for a moment Steve isn’t entirely sure if his answer will be affirmative. “I have to be.”

For a moment, he feels less alone, having another person to share this burden, this pain with. And then another thought dawns on him. If they manage to revert things back to normal, then –

“Hey, are you listening? Dude,” Barry’s voice cuts through his train of thought as he waves his hand vaguely in Steve’s line of vision. He shakes himself and straightens up.

“You want me to help you fix this. Whatever it is,” Steve begins carefully. His eyes dart around the dark room, inspecting all the equipment he doesn’t know the names of. They’re inside Barry’s workplace – which is really no more than a glorified warehouse in a less populated part of town – in the middle of the night to access his more advanced technology was a strange idea, but Steve was not about to turn down the opportunity. God knows they need all the help they can get.

“Yeah,” Barry replies. “I mean, full disclosure, it’s probably going to be harder now that I don’t have my powers. But luckily for you, I can still make some magic happen with a computer. I don’t know how that’s going to help, but we’ll make do somehow.”

“We need to find Diana,” Steve says, and is pleased to see Barry nod in agreement. “Not just because you can’t locate any of your other friends, making her our only option, but also because she’s about to declare an all-out war on the rest of us. Any ideas?”

“Well, you see, normally I can just speed over to wherever she is, but since we can’t do that…” he starts typing rapidly into the computer.

“We’ll have to make her come to us.” Steve finishes for him.

“Yes, but the question is, how? The only reason she’s going to get here is to wage war.” Barry says, and Steve is struck by how _wrong_ it sounds. _War_. Diana and war should not, could never belong in the same sentence. There is an aching looming in his chest, threatening to swallow him whole. He needs to see her, needs to understand why. “And in case you’ve forgotten, that’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid here. War.”

“Which is why we have to make her come to us specifically, before anyone else,” Steve explains. “That way we’ll have a good chance of stopping her before she starts wreaking havoc everywhere.”

“You expect her to come quietly?” Barry points out. “By herself? Just arrange a discreet rendezvous with us in some back alley, while her army waits at the base?”

“I’m saying,” Steve says, a hint of exasperation in his voice. “that she has spies. Scouts who report back to her, supply her with vital information. How else did she manage to creep up on our borders so quickly without anyone knowing? And why else would she give away the element of surprise by announcing her intent to invade?”

Barry’s eyebrows slowly knit together. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t want to be right, Barry,” Steve admits as dread overcomes him and causes him to shudder slightly. “But if I am, I think she’s already here.”

 

*

 

“Let’s just back up for a second,” Barry says, holding up his hands and shaking his head as if he can’t quite believe it himself. “You think that whole stunt on TV just now – ”

“ – is merely a distraction. Think about it. She knows that by broadcasting a threatening message promising invasion, the government will respond by increasing security and armed forces at the border, because they’ll be expecting an attack from the outside.”

“Leaving everything else open for her to take apart from the inside,” Barry deduces. “But how? Shouldn’t someone notice a bunch of giant warrior women hiding among us?”

“That’s probably where the spies come in,” Steve says. “You’d be surprised how much more easily you can blend in with a little help from an insider.”

Barry gets the feeling he’s speaking from personal experience.

“Also,” Steve adds, “Sometimes people overlook you if you’re a woman.”

He remembers Diana glaring frustratingly at the military officers in the conference room, a lifetime ago, and can’t help but crack a small smile. To be able to see that Diana again, to him it’s worth everything.

He won’t run again. Not this time.

Barry clears his throat, and he realizes he’d drifted off into a daydream for a few moments. He shakes himself and returns to strategizing.

(He hasn’t done that since the Great War. Despite the dire circumstances they’ve found themselves in, he feels relieved, happy almost, to finally be back in his element after so long.

Designing houses had never been his thing, after all.)

“Steve,” Barry nudges him again. “The plan?”

“Right. So if we can somehow intercept the spies – Of course, I’m not a hundred percent sure this is what’s actually going on, it’s just – ” Steve begins, but is interrupted by the sound of the door to the warehouse practically exploding.

They don’t even have enough time to duck before half the warehouse is blown up in a bang.

 

*

 

 _Not again_ , Steve mentally curses as he attempts to push the remains of a wooden desk off of him. His ears are ringing, and his eyes and lungs sting from the smoke. He struggles to take a breath, only to cough with all the dust swirling in the air. He reaches over to Barry, who seems to be out cold and bleeding from his temple, but still breathing.

He manages to push himself up by his elbows when he hears a familiar voice that makes his blood run cold.

“Well, don’t stop on my account,” Diana purrs, but there’s not a trace of the warmth he’s used to. It’s malicious, and cold, and burns within him so much that it makes his chest constrict. “You were just getting to the interesting part.”

Before he can react in any way, he feels a weight on his chest, and then the world goes black.

 

*

 

_Diana traced circles with her fingers on his skin, gazing at him contemplatively. The sky outside was pitch black and dotted with snow. The creaky bed in the old inn is almost too small for them, but Steve had never felt more comfortable, or more at home._

_“Do you ever wonder about… what comes after?” She asked him, voice barely above a whisper._

_“Hm?” he mumbled. He hadn’t realized he’d already begun to fall asleep to the comforting swirling motions of her fingers._

_“What you’re going to do,” she clarified. “once war ends forever.”_

_“I guess I’ll just go back to my old life,” he said, aiming for levity but not entirely certain it landed. “Maybe finally get some of that sleep I’ve been coveting.”_

_The truth was, he’d never thought about it. At times, he had been so certain that he’d never live to see the war end that “life after the war” seemed more like a fantasy, a what-if than a plan for the future. Over time, he’d trained himself not to dwell too much on it. He couldn’t let anything distract him from the mission, from God and country. Thinking about what he wanted was a luxury he couldn’t afford to give himself. He couldn’t let himself wander down that rabbit hole, tempting as it was. It was simply too painful. It had to be all about the mission. It had to be for the greater cause._

_“I don’t think I can go back to my old life,” Diana said, and she sounded so wistful that it almost broke his heart. “But I’d like to perhaps make a new one. It won’t be the same, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I don’t think.”_

_“No, it isn’t.” he said, even though she hadn’t phrased it as a question._

_He gazed at her, brushing a strand of her that had fallen over her face, stroking her cheek in the process. She leaned into his touch, sighing contentedly._

_“I think I’d really like to know,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed. He didn’t ask. They both knew what she meant. “Once I defeat Ares, there will be all the time in the world to find out.”_

_Looking at her in that moment, he found himself wanting to know, too._

 

_*_

 

The first thing he registers when he comes to is that his head is pounding.

The second thing he notices is that they appear to be in some sort of abandoned building, which has been redecorated into an impromptu throne room of a sort.

The third thing is that Diana is standing before him, her armor sharp at the edges, her gaze cold and calculating, boring into his very soul, seeking to uncover every secret, examine every thought.

He tries to move but finds the hold around him tighten; the glowing Lasso of Hestia binds him, burning cold into his skin.

He tries not to think about the last time this happened. Tries not to think how similar and yet different the situation is this time, such a stark contrast that he feels like laughing from the absurdity of it all, like his entire world has turned on its head and left him stranded, desperately grasping for something that is no longer there.

“Diana,” he gasps out, and immediately regrets it as one heavily-armored Amazon puts the business end of her blade to his throat.

“Address the Queen with such insolence again and I’ll slit your throat,” she grits out between her teeth.

“Where’s Barry?” he pushes, opting to change the subject instead. “The other man who was with me…” the Amazon’s blade at this throat makes one tiny, warning cut, and that silences him.

“You will speak when you are spoken to.”

Diana, for her part, continues to watch him. It makes him feel like a cornered animal, trapped in a cage for the curious to admire, point at, and mock. It makes him squirm, which only serves to make the Lasso tighten itself around him, but he meets her gaze resolutely, refusing to look away.

Finally, after what feels like hours, she speaks.

“Son of Prometheus,” she says, voice icy, betraying no emotion. “An ordinary human male, and yet you know of our plan. How?”

Steve breathes heavily as the Lasso burns into him. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He braced himself for punishment from the Amazon standing over him, but none comes. Instead, Diana looks intrigued. “Try me.”

He eyes the Amazon warily. Diana follows his gaze, and gives a curt nod. The guard steps back, and Steve cannot contain a sigh of relief.

“We knew each other,” he says, wary of her reaction. “In another world.”

Diana looks amused. “Is that so?”

She rises from her makeshift throne to her full height and approaches him. He gazes up at the heavily armored woman towering over him, and perhaps for the first time, is struck by how much this person looks like her, sounds like her, moves like her, but isn’t _her_.

Or is she? Could there be a part of her, hidden deep inside, that he can get to? Would he die trying?

“Tell me more.” she indicates for him to continue, but in a way that looks like she’s only playing with him, like a cat playing with a mouse in a trap before it devours it, rather than out of genuine curiosity. Still, he has to try.

“I met you when my plane crashed on your island, Themyscira. You rescued me from drowning.”

“Rescue? A man like you? Whoever you think I was thought too highly of your life,” she says, half-laughing with contempt, and his heart constricts.

“You left your home to follow me so you can stop the war,” Steve continues, biting back tears. “There were times when you lost faith in your mission, in yourself. There were times when you didn’t believe it was worth it. But it was, and you stopped the war, and protected mankind from itself.”

There was a moment of silence when he let himself have a glimmer of hope that his words may have touched her on some level, before Diana bursts out laughing, and her Amazons follow swift.

Steve feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest.

“This mortal has a sense of humor,” Diana declares. “And an active imagination, too. Perhaps I’ll keep him, for my own entertainment.”

“He disrespects you, my Queen. We should just kill him and be done with it.” a stern-looking Amazon says, and Steve could have sworn he has seen her before. The Amazon who knelt at Antiope’s body on the beach, grief-striken. She had not been friendly to him then, but her current demeanor is something else entirely, and it scares him a little, to see that contrast not only in Diana, but in her sisters, too.

“Now, now, Menalippe,” Diana waves a hand dismissively. “I’d like to hear more of his amusing tales first.”

She’s playing with him, he knows. She’s bored and wants to see him weak and helpless, ranting like a madman before she finally ends him. Despair grips at him like a vice, tighter than even the Lasso wrapped around his torso.

“That day when we had our first victory as a team,” he says, the words pouring out of him. What is there to lose anymore? Might as well let it all out. “We danced. There was a snowfall. You’d never seen snow before, it made you laugh.”

Diana opens her mouth to say something, but he cuts her off. He’s had enough of her cruelty, and if he is to die, he _will_ have the last word.

“You asked me what people usually do when there are no wars to fight,” he grits his teeth, pain numbing his entire body. “You told me that night that all your life, you were only training to be a warrior, to stop war. You never knew what it felt like to lead a normal life. I think deep down, you wanted to know that. The normalcy. The freedom of not having to carry a burden on your shoulders all the time.”

He stops to take his breath, but Diana doesn’t interrupt him this time. She seems to be listening to him, and he could have sworn there was a minuscule, barely noticeable shift on her face. Emboldened, he continues.

“I never thought about having a life, until you,” he confesses. All the words he wishes he had more time to tell her, they come pouring out all at once, like a dam’s been broken. “Until I met you. I wanted to share my life with you, the good and the bad, all of it. For as long as I lived, or as long as you’d allow me.”

Diana says nothing.

“I loved you,” he finally breathes out, whispering it the way someone would confess a dark secret, or a terrible sin. “I love you still. Please, Diana. Please.”

She is silent for a long moment. There is something in her eyes, he thinks (hopes, with all his being) a hint of thoughtful reconsideration as her mouth hangs open with words unsaid. Just as he starts to think he might have gotten to a part of her that was still the Diana he knew, she shakes herself off, as if getting out of a trance. Whatever trace of recognition he thought was on her face vanish, and she laughs again.

“Great Hera,” she exclaims. “This is a most intriguing man. A bit insolent, but we can work on that later. I’ll keep him. For now, throw him in the cages.”

She starts to retreat toward the throne, away from him, and Steve feels like his entire world has just collapsed on him.

There is only one last thing he can try. If she ever loved him, if she loves him still – And she does. He believes it. For just a split second, he saw that glimmer in her eyes before whatever cruel magic of this world crushed it, just as it’d done to his memories for so many weeks.

If he tries, he can get through to her. The Diana that he loves, not this distorted version created by the manipulations of this timeline.

And before he can stop himself, the words come out, cutting through the air like a knife.

“Why don’t you just end it, then?”

Diana whirrs around, eyes ablaze with fury in a way that makes him flinch, but there is something else there too, a little something not too unlike hesitation, or even uncertainty.

“What did you say?” her voice is steely, but he thinks he can hear a hint of shakiness. Call it foolish hope, or delusion brought about by the pain in his chest, but Steve swears he can feel it, just barely there, fighting to get free.

Or is there? Maybe he’s just lying to himself, his subconscious offering a last-ditch attempt at comfort before the end.

He sucks in a deep breath. “If there’s truly nothing left of you, of Diana… Then just end it.”

She stands there for a second, then wordlessly reaches for the sword leaning against her throne and unsheathes it with a sharp sound. It rings in his ears.

He lowers his gaze to the ground, trying to steady himself as the world swims in his vision. The burning sensation from the Lasso has spread around his body, invisible flames licking at his skin.

He looks up, and meets her gaze head-on, challenging her. “If the woman I love is no longer there, then just kill me and get it over with.”

Her expression is unreadable as she holds the sword over him. He closes his eyes, bracing himself for the end.

_“I love you, Diana. Come back to me.”_

He hears a loud clang as metal collides with concrete, and opens his eyes to see Diana has brought the sword down on the ground in front of him. He whips up his head to look at her. She’s panting with effort, her eyes wide and watery.

“Diana?” he begins, and she finally looks at him. In between ragged breaths, she manages a weak smile, though there’s no mirth in it.

“Steve,” she whispers, her voice shaky. “Steve. I – ”

The Lasso releases him, and he collapses to the ground on all fours, but before he can register what’s happening, he feels her warm hands cup his face protectively, lifting his gaze to meet hers. He thinks he can hear some of the Amazons whisper among themselves in confusion and disapproval, but Diana ignores them.

“Steve,” she breathes heavily, as if not quite believing what she’s seeing. “You’re here. You’re alive. And I – Oh God. I almost – I could have – ”

“Hey,” he says, trying his best to sound soothing despite his own numbing pain. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be alright.”

“It’s not okay,” she insists, shaking her head, and a tear rolls down her cheek. He wants to wipe it off her face, to tell her over and over that it’s okay until she believes it, but finds his limbs surprisingly heavy. He drops his head onto her shoulder, leaning on her as she holds him.

“I almost killed you,” she whispers. “I _wanted_ to kill you, I came so close – ”

“But you didn’t,” he reassures her. “You fought it. Like I always knew you would. Like you always do.”

“Steve, I – ” she starts, but freezes when he slumps into her, a dead weight. Moving to cradle his head in her lap, she stares at him, panicked. “Steve, what’s – No, you can’t. Steve, please. You can’t leave me again. Not again. It’s too soon. I can’t – I can’t do this again.”

 _The world is realigning itself_ , he thinks through the haze of his own mind. He supposes it makes sense. He’s managed to fix it by getting Diana to remember herself, creating a paradox that will return reality to the way everything was. A reality without him.

Diana is sobbing now, hot tears falling onto his face. He hates having to hurt her like this, and not for the first time, either. Summoning all his strength, he reaches up to touch her face, and finds himself smiling despite it all.

_“I love you.”_

“No, not like this – I never got to – ”

 _I know_ , he wants to tell her. _I know now. You don’t have to say it._ But his eyelids are too heavy, and the lines of her face, distraught with grief, contort and swim in his vision.

The world goes dark, and he’s sucked into the endless abyss. Into the awaiting oblivion.

He thinks he hears a scream tearing through time and space, before nothingness takes over.

 

*

 

Diana sits there for a long time, holding him. She almost laughs at the unfairness of it all. If the Gods decide the course of fate, then they sure have a sense of humor bordering on cruelty.

“Diana?” Menalippe speaks up, voice dazed and a bit confused. “Princess? What’s going on?”

They’re starting to remember too, she thinks. Whatever bad dream they’re in – and she can’t remember much other than the feeling of not being in control of her own body, like her own subconscious was buried deep within a body that’s operating on autopilot – will be over soon, and the world will be as it was before this nightmare started.

But she doesn’t care about any of that, at least not yet. In that moment, the only thing she can think of, a single thought tearing every atom in her body in half, gnawing at her insides, a single question: _Why?_

Why would the universe return him to her only to rip him away again? How many times can she watch him die until it destroys her?

Artemis tries to pry her away from him, but she shrugs her off. “Please,” she breathes out. “Please, just leave me be.”

As Artemis backs off, she hears a whoosh, and a millisecond later, a familiar red suit appears before her. Barry. Her sisters must have released him from the cages now that they’ve regained their memories, and he seems to have his powers back, too.

Everything is righting itself.

Then why, does she feel like she’s in the wrong timeline?

“Oh my God,” Barry whispers as he takes in the scene before him. “Diana, I’m so sorry.”

His appearance reminds her, with an uncomfortable jolt, that this isn’t just about her. They have a duty to make sure the world returns to normal. There will be time for grief later. The greater good must always come first.

She wipes her tears and puts on the strongest face she can muster. “Don’t be,” she tells him, careful not to let her voice betray the anguish she feels inside. “We have to – we have to make sure everything goes back to normal.”

Barry looks like he’s about to protest, but thinks better of it. “Well, you’ve probably noticed some things have started to – ” he hesitates, clearly deliberating his choice of words. “ – revert to the way they were. I suppose we could wait it out, or I could set it right myself, that’d be, um, faster.”

She nods in understanding. “I think that’d be for the best.”

She has no desire to stay in this hell any longer. Perhaps, if the Gods are kind, when they return her to her own timeline, she won’t remember any of this. The fleeting joy of reunion, the despair of loss.

Barry nods, then sets to work. Her surroundings light up, before becoming a blinding light. She hears faint voices in the distance, speaking a thousand different tongues. Voices of the past, present, and future.

She bends down and plants a kiss on Steve’s forehead, letting her lips linger slightly. She takes him in, memorizing every detail for the last time. At least this time, she comforts herself, she gets to say goodbye.

 _“I love you, too.”_ she whispers.

 

*

 

When the blinding light fades away, she’s surprised to find herself still in the same spot, in the same warehouse. It takes a moment for her memories – real, actual memories this time – to return. They were on a mission, the Justice League, raiding a LexCorp warehouse when –

It all makes sense now.

But what surprises her most is that Steve is still there, cradled in her arms. Something annoyingly similar to hope prickles at her, and she shakes him gently.

“Steve?”

For a moment, nothing happens. She’s about to try again when the man in her arms takes a sharp breath, and starts coughing.

“Oh, God,” he croaks out, grimacing as he tries to sit up. “That was – that was awful. What did I ever do to deserve – ”

Diana throws her arms around him, joy, disbelief, and relief all mixed into one, and Steve gives out a little squeak.

“Ow,” he manages. “Diana… I can’t breathe.”

She releases him immediately, looking sheepish. “Sorry, I – ”

“No, no, it’s okay,” he says, trailing off. Then, after a beat. “I’m still here.”

“You’re still here.” She echoes, affirmative.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. Truthfully, a part of her is afraid that if she asks too many questions, he’ll just vanish again. “But I think that can be a problem for tomorrow. We’ve had a long day.”

Steve laughs despite himself. “You can say that again.”

A moment of silence passes in which they simply stare at each other, in awe that they’re truly here, and together, and not stuck in some Opposite Day hellhole. Steve breaks the silence, rubbing the back of his head as he takes in their surroundings.

“So… is everything back to normal?” he asks.

“I think so,” she replies, mirroring him and looking around. They’re definitely in the same place as before, but the lack of an Amazon army and the makeshift throne, replaced by stacks upon stacks of containers with the LexCorp logo on them confirms that this is indeed, not the same reality.

 _Barry did it, then_ , she thinks to herself, and makes a note to herself to have a very serious conversation with him about messing with the Speed Force later.

“Diana, what’s your status?” Bruce’s voice rings out over the Justice League comms, the final confirmation that everything is, indeed, back to normal, and Diana has never felt so relieved to hear his voice. “We’re coming in.”

She holds a finger to her ear. “I’ve got the situation under control.”

She turns to Steve, who’s staring at her quizzically. When she speaks again, she’s looking right at him and he’s not sure if she’s speaking to the Justice League, or to him. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

 

*

 

The transition is hard, at first.

Steve can still remember the look on Diana’s friends’ faces when they first saw him. One of them – Clark – took to him almost immediately, with natural charm and easygoing nature. Bruce took some convincing, mostly because he had been concerned about the potential repercussions that such a monumental shift would have on the timeline, and for the longest time, eyed him suspiciously, while the man with half his body covered in metal and wires (Cyborg, he hears Diana call him) simply observed. If he disapproved, he did not show it. Barry got a good talking to from the others, and for weeks they waited with bated breath for some anomaly to show itself, but none came.

As far as they could tell, the world went on as it should.

Finally, they declared him all clear (in Bruce’s case, with great reluctance and trepidation) and released him from what he can only describe as quarantine mixed with interrogation here and there while Cyborg scanned him.

They move out of the Justice League mansion in Gotham and into Diana’s Parisian apartment, the one with a great view of the city at night, with millions of lights lighting up the darkness. He doesn’t think he has ever seen Paris so beautiful, so filled with light, so… peaceful.

They did it, after all. _Diana_ did it. She saved the world.

(Just as he’s always known she would.)

“It’s beautiful,” he gasps before he can stop himself, his eyes transfixed on the blinding lights coming from the windows above them.

Diana laughs softly, joining him as they gaze at the streets together. “It is, isn’t it?”

Steve turns to her, and not for the first time, but for the first time since he’s been back, his breath catches in his throat at the sight of her.

“I never thought we’d make it,” he admits, quietly, wistfully.

“But we did,” Diana reassures him. “We’re here. We’re alive. War is no more.”

Wordlessly, he reaches out for her hand, and she takes his. He feels her visibly relax into his touch as she exhales in relief, and smiles.

 

*

 

At first, they’re not sure where to go from here. How do you go on, after being dead for a hundred years and then reuniting through some parallel dimension? So the first couple days, they dance around each other. While Steve believes that he still knows who Diana is, at her core, she has a new life now, one he knows nothing about. At times she would do something, or say something, in a way that reminds him starkly that even though for him, everything was suspended in time, perfectly preserved as if they happened only yesterday, for her, a century has passed.

He doesn’t want to be presumptuous, he’s always respected her too much for that. As for Diana, he imagines she’s giving him time and space to adjust. If he knows her – and that stint in that other world proves he can still read her quite well – he knows she doesn’t want to come off as presumptuous, either.

Until one December night, just after dinner, he decides it’s time they tackled the elephant in the room.

“Diana,” he calls to her sitting on the sofa as he waits for their coffee to finish brewing. The memories that he retained from that other world have really come in handy in dealing with stuff like this. He imagines that without them, he’d probably have a much harder time adapting to 21st century technology.

All’s well that ends well, then. In the end, perhaps everything that happens, good or bad, is meant to serve some kind of purpose.

“Yes?” she responds, looking up from her book.

“Can we… talk about this?” He asks, gesturing vaguely around them before plopping himself on the sofa, at a distance he considers appropriate.

He senses she wants him to clarify but chooses not to voice that request for fear of making him feel cornered. “Of course.”

“I…” he begins, then finds himself at a loss for words. Frustrated, he decides to hell with it and just blurts out the first thing on his mind. “So what now?”

She cocks her head to the side, giving him a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“This… thing between us,” he grimaces at his choice of words. “I mean, I understand that you have your life, and I wouldn’t want to intrude – ”

“You’re not intruding on anything,” she says, not unkind. “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want you here.”

“Right,” he mulls on her words for a moment. “Right. Of course.”

“Steve,” she begins, scooting closer to him, taking his hand in hers. “Did you mean it? What you said.”

He didn’t even have to think about the answer. “Every word.”

He meant it that day on the airfield, and he meant it that day when she held him in her arms as the universe realigned itself. It is, quite possibly, the one thing he’s ever been certain about in his life.

“Then what’s stopping us from being together?” Diana asks him, voice soft.

“I… I didn’t want to just assume that we can just… pick up where we left off,” he says, feeling his cheek redden as Diana shoots him a strange look and chuckles.

“Why not?”

“I mean… it’s been a long time. You’ve moved on, you have your own life now.”

She bites her lip and stays silent for a moment, as if taking in his words. When she speaks again, her voice is so shaky he’s afraid she might cry.

“I – I never stopped thinking about you,” she confesses. “I never stopped loving you.”

“Diana,” instinctively, he puts his arm around her, and she leans into him, her fingers curling on the fabric of his shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry you had to fight alone for so long.”

“It’s been hard,” she says. “But I like to think I did well. Or my best, at least.”

He smiles at her, fond and affectionate. “I never doubted it for a second.”

Diana shifts so that she’s looking up at him, her face suddenly serious. “How many more second chances do you think we’re going to get until we finally take them?”

He leans in to kiss her then, the most perfect, gentle kiss. Diana is tentative at first, before responding with all the fervor of a love lost then found in the most unexpected way, of a hundred years’ worth of longing and heartbreak. A hundred years and a whole universe between them, and yet kissing her feels like coming home, like no time has passed at all. Like it’s the most natural thing, like it’s the only he knows, the only thing he is meant to do.

Before they know it, she’s straddling him, her hands running through his hair, her lips exploring every inch of skin on his neck. He holds onto her life a lifeline, his hands fumbling with the hem of her sweater, silently cursing himself when his hand accidentally sends the remote control sitting on the coffee table crashing loudly onto the floor.

“Maybe we should continue this elsewhere,” he says teasingly.

She laughs, and he wants to bottle the sound forever. Or maybe spend the rest of his life making her laugh, he thinks as she pulls him from the sofa and leads him into the bedroom.

 

*

 

It’s an oddly familiar scene: them in bed, wrapped around each other, snow falling outside the window, dotting a pitch black world with the occasional white.

It reminds him of Veld, which now feels like it happened several lifetimes ago. Despite the war, that was a simpler time, but perhaps this time, they’ll make it a happier time.

“I always liked it when you do that,” he tells her, as she gently traces every scar, every birthmark on his skin with her fingers.

“You remember,” she says. It is not a question.

“How could I not? I’m not the one who’s lived a hundred years in-between, am I?” He jokes, reaching over to brush a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“I remember, too,” she says, voice quiet. “What we talked about that night.”

“What do you think?” he asks.

“I think, I’d still like to try,” she admits. “If you’ll have me.”

 _If_ he’ll have her? That shouldn’t even be a question.

“I think,” he says, pausing for effect. “I’d like that very much.”

She smiles then, the first real smile he’s seen since they saw each other again. “I love you. Now and always.”

He presses a kiss to her temple. “I love you, too. That will never change.”

“Good,” she mumbles, already beginning to get sleepy. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve chuckles softly. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Diana burrows her head in his neck and lets out a contented sigh. “I wonder what other things people do…” She doesn’t need to finish. They both know what she means.

They can’t have their old life back, what they’re going to build this time will be different, and maybe, just maybe, even better.

“Well, we have all the time in the world to find out.”

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I have to admit, this is my first time working such a complex plot told almost entirely from the limited perspective of a couple characters into a fic before. I wanted to convey Steve's internal struggle and confusion while at the same time not confusing the readers and still making the plot easy to follow, and I must say I'm rather proud of the result! And though this is a Steve/Diana centric story, I wanted to at least take some time to address Barry's feelings regarding the whole ordeal. As always, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated and cherished, and feel free to chat more with me about this particular universe if you'd like!
> 
> Some comic canon references: 1) Tracy Trevor is Steve's older sister in N52; 2) Nick and Maya are Steve's friends in Rebirth; 3) Steve being an architect is a nod to Wonder Woman: The Blue Amazon.


End file.
